


Burn

by OnAStallion, wobblyheadeddollcaper



Series: There Must Be 50 Ways To Please Your Lover [7]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Dirty Talk, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 14:12:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5629345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnAStallion/pseuds/OnAStallion, https://archiveofourown.org/users/wobblyheadeddollcaper/pseuds/wobblyheadeddollcaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The consequences of mutual, illegal sexual desire in a busy military camp. AKA so much pining.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn

Laurens and Hamilton meet in New York, join up with the Sons of Liberty, get promoted for their daring capture of enemy cannons during the retreat from the British invasion and, having come to the notice of the general, join Washington’s staff. It’s an honor and a privilege to work with the leader of the Americans.

It’s also the cause of the worst period of sexual frustration Laurens has ever experienced.

In New York they’d had time and privacy enough for him to learn what Hamilton tastes like, what he sounds like when he comes, his hunger for touch that sparks all Laurens’s most base and tender instincts. Now they temper their behavior to military demands, and Laurens feels as if he has a constant, low-level fever in his blood, spiking up when Hamilton’s sleeve brushes his, or when their fingers touch as he hands over a letter.

Their work is important, more important by far than two men’s lives, which are in turn far more important than mere desire. And if Laurens were indeed alone in his desires he would ignore it, like snuffing out a candle to relight later. When he meets Hamilton’s eyes, however, he knows he is not alone, and it’s quite impossible to retreat. There’s an aching pleasure to it as well, daring to murmur ‘I miss your touch’ in Hamilton’s ear when they are unobserved, watching his hands stop their purposeful mending of a broken quill as Hamilton’s breathing hitches and he replies, equally low:

“I could take you over that desk, if it would help.”

“It – it really would,” Laurens says, a little light-headed. It’s all talk, of course, but the image alone makes him dig his nails into his palms in a futile effort to regain self-control.

“Hamilton,” General Washington says, and Laurens freezes for what he hopes is an inconspicuous moment before taking the quill from Hamilton so that he can go and receive his orders.

*

Laurens knows they have to be careful, but sometimes he acts before he can remember why he shouldn’t – something equally true on the battlefield, according to Hamilton. He is reminded brutally of the restrictions on them when he catches Hamilton’s eye across their desks, mouths him a kiss, and Hamilton looks sharply away.

“Laurens, if you’re bored enough to play the fool you have letters to write,” he says, his voice chilly. He looks over at the door of the tent. “Burr, sir, come in.”

 _You idiot_ , Laurens curses himself, and returns to his letter, turning the sting of rejection into self-rebuke. He hadn’t noticed Burr at the door of the tent and Burr is, for all his faults, not an unobservant man.

“We need to talk,” Hamilton says later, tense and unsmiling. Laurens wants to stop his mouth with a kiss, feeling wretched already.

“I’m sorry,” he says uselessly.

“Self-denial’s not pleasant for me either,” Hamilton says. “But the stakes are higher for me, so-“

“I know, I won’t do it again.” If Laurens gets accused of sodomy, his father will probably quash it before it comes to a criminal case. No one has that kind of shield ready for Hamilton’s back.

“You will, though,” Hamilton says ruefully. “I don’t think either of us could stop entirely now, not when…” He leans in a little as he trails off and Laurens sways forward to mirror him.

“Not when you make me feel like this,” Laurens says, quiet and urgent. Hamilton looks up at him properly now, his face hunted and desperately aroused in equal measure.

“It’s just a question of timing. Not when you don’t have clear sight of the door.”

“Clear sightlines,” Laurens agrees. “No other people in the room.” It doesn’t escape either of them that the tent they are currently in meets this description.

“You were sent to try me,” Hamilton says in mock-sorrow. “You and your ridiculously fake innocent eyes.”

Laurens flutters his lashes at him in a ridiculous imitation of a society miss.

“That shouldn’t be attractive,” Hamilton complains. “How do you do that?”

“You do it,” Laurens says. “You get this look, like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, and it means you’re thinking about me.”

“About you?” Hamilton smiles wolfishly. “What am I thinking about?” His eyes are watching Laurens’s mouth, and when Laurens licks his lips Hamilton’s gaze sharpens to an intense focus. It doesn’t take much intuition to guess.

“How much you’d like to be in my mouth right now.”

“You just want my cock. Always so hungry for it,” Hamilton murmurs, lifting his hand up briefly to run a fingertip along Laurens’s lower lip. The sensation lingers long after the touch.

“I think about it all the time,” Laurens says honestly. “Sucking you off. The way you taste, the sounds you make.”

“Oh Christ, enough. This is torturous,” Hamilton says, half-laughing.

“Tell me you don’t think about it,” Laurens challenges him.

“About you on your knees for me?” Hamilton asks, stepping forward into his personal space and looking up at him through his eyelashes.

“Or on my back. How long since you’ve been inside me?”

“You know exactly how long, John. You can’t forget a second of it, the same way I can’t forget how you looked that night. You look ecstatic when you come for me, did you know?”

Laurens swears under his breath and looks around – they’re alone, the door of the tent is closed – and risks a kiss. It’s quick, bruisingly fierce, and difficult to stop, with Hamilton’s mouth soft and eager under his.

“We can’t,” Laurens says, hoping to be contradicted.

“I know, I – fuck, we can’t.” Hamilton’s breath is hot against his face.

“You want me, though.”

“Of course I do,” Hamilton says, his voice ragged. “Just, stop, please.”

“Sorry,” Laurens says, stepping back. They both take a moment to catch their breath. Laurens thinks about moths and candle-flames, how the damn things never seem to learn. He can do better, he has to do better.

“The stakes are higher for me,” Hamilton says unwillingly. “If you meet someone else-“

“I don’t want anyone else,” Laurens says, cutting him off.

“God damn it, at least let me get the offer out. I’m trying to be noble here.”

“Wrong audience, on two counts. One, no aristocracy in the revolution. Two, it’s me you’re talking to. I know damn well that you don’t want to share me, and I don’t want anyone but you.”

“Are you sure?” Hamilton says doubtfully.

“A starvation diet of you is better than a feast of anyone else,” Laurens says, trying to make a joke out of what he means in earnest. It suddenly hits him, like the icy shock of falling into cold water, that Hamilton’s offer might have been a polite way to shed him.

“Would it be easier for you if we didn’t…? If we stopped completely. Even in private.”

“Probably would, yeah,” Hamilton says wryly.

Laurens feels as if he has been punched in the stomach, but at least his course is clear now.

“Then I can only thank you for putting up with me this long.” His voice sounds strange and leaden in his own ears. “I’ll need some time to arrange it, but I can transfer-“

“What do you mean?” Hamilton says, shocked. “Why would you leave me?”

“It would be easier for you if I wasn’t around.” And if he is to stop, he will need physical distance. Laurens is not capable of deluding himself into thinking that he can share a tent with Hamilton and not ache for him, not eventually reach out in weakness – and Hamilton is too kind not to give in, and then they would be where they are now all over again, with his heart getting ripped out.

“That doesn’t mean I want you to go!” Hamilton reaches out to grasp Laurens’s sleeve, as if to physically keep him near. “Even if we weren’t lovers, I need you with me. When have I ever taken the easy way out of anything, Laurens?”

“I can’t stay with you and not want you.”

“But we’ll continue as we are,” Hamilton says, sounding confused. “We’ll just be more careful - John, what’s happening in your head? We agreed on this already. ‘Putting up with you’," he says derisively. "Fucking hell, don’t be a fool. You know how much I want you.”

“Then of course I’ll stay,” Laurens says. Though he’s reassured, his nerves are still on alert, still picturing the misery of being sent away. “I just didn’t want to be yet another obstacle for you.”

“Well, everything worthwhile is a challenge. You’ll have to settle for making me happy,” Hamilton says. “Satisfaction is not in my nature. Why-” A bugle sounds outside. “Shit, Lee’s arrived, we should go. Do I look-“

“You look fine.” They make it a rule to keep their clothes entirely on, even when they do get privacy. Laurens hasn’t seen Hamilton’s bare chest in weeks. They used to be less careful, until a heart-stopping near-miss in the early days of the campaign that meant Hamilton had to fake a shoulder injury. (Why is your shirt so disarranged, and where is Laurens’s necktie? Oh, I had to bandage Hamilton’s shoulder, it’s his old wound from the New York retreat – yes sir, we’ll go to the medical tent next time.)

*

They don’t have a moment to themselves for several days, and there’s a new distance between them. At first Laurens puts it down to being careful, and does his best to stick to the boundaries Hamilton has drawn – but even their friendship is different, a shadow of pain around Hamilton’s mouth where there used to be laughter. When they finally get some time to themselves Laurens looks round quickly, then kisses him as desperately as he can.

“What happened to make you cold to me,” he asks Hamilton. “What did I do?”

Hamilton does him the courtesy of getting straight to the point. Their conversations have become terrifically focused since the war began. Where they once used to meander and evade and discuss and profess their loves with historical allusions, they now have to argue or commiserate in semaphore-like bursts of compressed information.

“When you said you would leave, a few days ago. You’d really leave me like that?”

“Like…?”

“Like you’d thank me for my services and transfer to the southern front. You’d run away from me that quickly?” Underneath the bitterness there’s bewildered hurt.

“Leaving you would hurt me, but I wouldn’t stick around to trouble you if you didn’t-“ love me back, he doesn’t say. “If you wanted me out of the way. I’m not your dog, to whine at your heels for scraps.” Laurens grabs him by the back of his neck and shakes him lightly. “Also, what’s this shit about your ‘services’? We’re in this together, aren’t we?”

“Fuck, come here.” Hamilton looks round quickly before pulling Laurens to him, hugging him close and pressing a kiss to the point where his jaw meets his throat. Laurens pulls away just enough to be able to kiss him properly.

“When this war is over,” Hamilton says, his voice shaking, “I’m going to take you somewhere quiet and we’ll fuck for a week.”

“Two weeks,” Laurens says. “Speaking of the war-“

“Yeah, I know. God, what I wouldn’t give for five minutes alone-“ He presses his forehead into the crook of Laurens’s neck.

“I’ll think of something,” Laurens says. “If this pace doesn’t let up, I’ll arrange it. We can get a leave of absence. I’ll make something up.”

“Please.” Hamilton tears himself away after one last kiss, straightens his clothing and sighs. “Once more into the breach.”

“Lay on, MacDuff.”

They share a tent with four other men. It’s impossible to get the place to themselves. General Washington’s tent is the place they get time together most often, but it’s practically a public thoroughfare. The busy traffic and conversation is its own kind of cover, though.

“If I crawled under your desk to suck you off, do you think they would spot me before or after you came in my mouth?” Hamilton whispers, depositing another stack of papers on his desk. Laurens’s pen sputters and leaves an inkblot that he has to scrape off the letter. He finds a letter from Albany relevant to Hamilton’s assignment and takes it over to Hamilton’s desk.

“Chances are good I’d get off long before anyone had a chance to notice you’d gone missing, but I can’t promise I’d be quiet,” he says, low and conversational, like they’re discussing the weather. He returns to his desk, and they write in mutual silence for an hour or so.

“Hey Laurens,” Hamilton says from across the room. There are a couple of lieutenants cooling their heels while waiting for orders, but it’s fairly quiet. “That thing we were talking about, if I made it an order do you think it would make a difference?”

“Don’t know,” Laurens says, struggling to sound normal. “You’d have to be very clear about the consequences of disobedience.”

“Good idea,” Hamilton says, after a pause that hopefully only Laurens notices. He can’t look at Hamilton right now, if he does he’s going to – something, he’s not sure what, but it will definitely not be good for his career.

“Is there a mutiny happening?” The smaller of the lieutenants asks, scratching his acne. Is he actually old enough to fight? John’s clearly getting elderly at the advanced age of twenty-three. The taller one hits him. “Ow, Weland, quit it!”

“No, lieutenant, there isn’t. Not that it’s your concern,” Hamilton says sharply. “Clearly you’re not being kept busy enough.”

“Idiot,” Weland mutters.

Laurens smiles at his letter and keeps his head down.

When they reach their tent that evening the others are already bedded down for the night. Probably sleeping, but it’s not worth the risk to do more than bid each other goodnight. Laurens stares blindly up into the darkness and aches.

He could touch himself, it’s dark enough. He could be quiet. Even the thought of finally getting some release makes him a little hard, and then he remembers Hamilton’s voice saying ‘if I made it an order’.

Fuck it, it may be rude to jack off in a shared tent but it’s not actually criminal. Just manly urges, he justifies to the imaginary jury in his head. He reaches down and wraps one hand around his cock, the other one seeking a handkerchief. No time for anything drawn-out, he just needs to be able to sleep.

‘You look ecstatic when you come for me, did you know?’ Hamilton’s voice says in his head, provoking him. ‘Always so hungry for it.’

He presses his lips together. He’s not going to make a sound, he’s going to keep his breathing even, if Hamilton were under his desk he’d have to pretend nothing was happening even as Hamilton pushed his thighs apart and held them open, even while he came into that hot, tight mouth-

It’s not enough to blunt the edge of his desire, but it’s enough to let him sleep.


End file.
